Your headshot will spend most of its life as a small circle next to your name. It is looked at quickly, usually by someone deciding whether to reply to you, and the decisions that change it are made before the camera comes out.
There are about four of them, and none takes long.
What to wear
Solid colours in a well-fitted cut. Navy, charcoal and deep burgundy all photograph well because they are mid-tone: they hold detail, they do not glow, and they leave your face as the brightest thing in the frame.
Pure white and pure black are the two to avoid. White sits at the top of the tonal range and drags the eye down to your shirt. Black sits at the bottom, loses all its detail, and on a dark background turns your head into a floating object. Fine patterns are the other problem, because narrow stripes and small checks can shimmer once the image is resized for a website.
Fit matters more than brand. A jacket that sits properly across the shoulders reads as competence from across a room, and a jacket that does not cannot be fixed in editing. Classic cuts also age better than whatever is current, which matters if this photograph is meant to last a few years.
Bring two or three options rather than one, and steam or iron them the night before. Creases from a garment bag are visible at full resolution and tedious to remove.
Grooming
Book the haircut one to two weeks out, not the day before. Fresh cuts look fresh, and a week of growth is what you actually look like.
Style your hair the way you normally style it. The purpose of the photograph is that people recognise you, so a version of you that only exists on the day is working against itself. The same goes for makeup: a natural, matte finish, in neutral colours. Matte matters because studio lighting finds every shiny surface on a face, and a foundation that looks right in a bathroom mirror can read as glare under two lights.
Bring whatever you would need to fix your hair or your face after twenty minutes of standing under warm lights.
Timing
Morning sessions are better if you have the choice. Faces are less tired, eyes are clearer, and clothes have not yet been sat in.
Arrive early enough to stop moving before you start. Ten minutes of sitting down is the difference between a person and a person who has just parked in a hurry.
What to bring
- Two or three outfit changes, on hangers
- Hair product and a comb
- Makeup for touch-ups
- A lint roller, which is the single most useful thing on this list for anyone wearing dark colours
- Reading glasses, if you wear them in the situations where this photograph will be seen
- A laptop, tools or anything else you would be holding in an environmental shot
Posing and expression
Your photographer will direct this, and it is easier than it sounds. A few things are worth knowing in advance so the direction makes sense.
Turn your shoulders slightly away from the camera and bring your face back to it. Square-on to the lens is the widest possible version of anyone, and a small rotation fixes it.
Keep your chin level or a fraction below. Raised chins read as looking down at the viewer, and dropped chins do the opposite. A slight tilt of the head reads as engaged rather than posed, but the difference between slight and theatrical is about two centimetres.
For the eyes, look at the lens rather than through it, and think about something specific. Blank eye contact and a wide-eyed stare are both very obvious in a still frame.
For the mouth, practise a few intensities before the session, with and without teeth. Most people have exactly one smile they trust and it is usually too big. The one you want is normally two notches down from it, and it is easier to find in a mirror at home than in front of a stranger.
What the photograph needs to say
This is the decision worth making before you book, because it drives the wardrobe, the background and the lighting together.
Conservative. Finance, law, professional services. Traditional colours, minimal accessories, even lighting with soft shadows, plain background. The photograph is doing one job: you are careful and you can be trusted with something that matters.
Approachable. Consultancies, agencies, client-facing roles. Business casual, more colour, a lighting setup with visible direction to it. Less formal without becoming casual.
Contemporary. Technology and startups. Smart casual, clean lines, often an environmental setting with the workplace softly out of focus behind you.
None of these is better than the others. The mistake is being photographed in one register and then using the picture in another.
Backgrounds and lighting
Three broad options, and it is worth agreeing on one in advance.
A plain neutral background in grey or blue is the safe answer. It crops to any shape, it never dates, and it sits well next to other headshots when your whole team is on one page.
An environmental background puts you in your workplace with the room thrown out of focus. It carries more information and it is harder to match if a new person joins in six months and is photographed somewhere else.
Textured or architectural backgrounds sit between the two. They photograph well and they are the first thing to look out of date.
On lighting, even and low-contrast is the standard corporate look. More directional lighting, with a defined shadow on one side of the face, is more dimensional and less neutral. Either works, so long as everyone in the same set is lit the same way.
Choosing the frame afterwards
Ask for a horizontal and a vertical version, because a website banner and a profile circle need different crops of the same photograph and one file rarely does both.
When you pick, ignore the one where you look best and take the one where you look most like yourself on a normal Tuesday. That is the photograph that survives being met in person.
Also ask what you are licensed to do with the files before you pay, particularly if the photograph is going into a press release, a conference programme or a printed brochure. It is a short conversation before the shoot and an awkward one afterwards.
Afterwards
Update every profile at once. A headshot that is current on LinkedIn and four years old on the company site is worse than either on its own.
Then plan to redo it every two or three years, or sooner if you have significantly changed how you look. The photograph has one job, and that is to make you recognisable to someone who has only seen it.
